


Always Take A Big Bite

by cumberhardhiddlesbitch



Series: The Rhombus 'Verse [13]
Category: British Actor RPF
Genre: BDSM, F/M, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Multi, Platonic BDSM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 11:08:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18260045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cumberhardhiddlesbitch/pseuds/cumberhardhiddlesbitch
Summary: Tom and Shannon have a discussion about BDSM and Shannon learns a little more about his personal history.





	Always Take A Big Bite

**Author's Note:**

> The "platonic BDSM" tag refers to a relationship that is discussed but not seen.

Shannon was curled up in the corner of the sofa, a heavy book resting on the arm as she read. Tom stood at the edge of the carpet, his mouth suddenly feeling dry. All the way home he had tried to think of how to open this conversation, how to even start, but he’d come up with nothing, and as he’d run up the stairs it seemed that he might think of something in the moment, but nothing came.

“Are you alright?” Shannon didn’t look worried, but it was probably the thing to say, he considered, as he was just standing there staring at her.

“I’m good, yeah.” He ran his hand over his mouth, thinking. “It’s nice to come home to you already here.” On the rug next to the sofa Max had lifted his head when Tom came in, and he thumped his tail on the floor, as if thinking that Tom was speaking to him. 

She closed the book and set it on the coffee table. “It’s nice to be here.” She tilted her head as she looked up at him. “You’re home early.”

“Got lucky with that today,” he said. He turned to the kitchen, his mouth truly dry. “Do you want anything to drink?”

“Glass of water would be nice,” she said.

He poured them each a glass of water and returned to the living area, handing her a glass and setting his own on a coaster after he took a long drink. He didn’t sit down, not sure of how close she’d want him as they spoke. After another moment of standing too far away he stepped closer to her, two awkward short steps across a space that was too far for one big step, and kissed her, leaning over and cupping the back of her head.

“Do you have to go out again?” she asked. “Max and I had a nice long walk earlier.”

“No, I don’t have to go out again, why?” He had stepped back, nearly hitting the coffee table.

“You’re not sitting down, is all.”

He put his hands in his pockets, immediately drew them out again, left them on his hips as he thought. “I just have to talk to you about something,” he said.

“Well, I’m here,” she said. “What is it?” She smiled at him, but it looked uncertain.

“It’s nothing bad,” he said, seeing the fear that creased the sides of her eyes. “I mean, I don’t think it’s anything bad, just something I have to talk to you about. It doesn’t have to be now, even, just that we’re both here.” He wound up on the other side of the coffee table, his hands on his hips again.

“Well, come and sit down, whatever it is, good, bad, or indifferent. You standing there with your hands on your hips makes me feel like you’re some stern head teacher about to tell me off. Not that we wouldn’t both enjoy that.” She smiled at him, clearly trying to lighten the mood, but it only sent a chill through him, unsettling him as he only felt more confused about where to even start. She had done and said enough things to make him think she had some inkling of his own preferences, even shared them, but if he was wrong, especially if he was wrong in a big way, the bit of hope he’d been carrying around was going to make the rejection that much harder.

It had been Ben of all people who had convinced him to broach the subject, pointing out that Shannon wouldn’t thank him for keeping it from her once she did find out, whether she was accepting or not. He owed it to her to tell, he thought, but opening the door to disgust or ridicule, or, even worse, to the prospect that she might actually fear him, made actually talking difficult. 

“Are you ok, really?” she asked as she stood up. She walked around the table and set her hand gently against the inside of his wrist, pressing until he took his hand away from his face. Max sensed that something was off too, standing next to the two of them and looking up, first at Tom and then at Shannon.

“I really am. I’m just not good at starting things.” He reached out as she stepped closer, his arms wrapping around her as she hugged him, reaching one hand down after a moment to scratch at Max’s head, soothing him. 

“You’re fine. Come on.” She took his hand and urged him towards the sofa. “In all seriousness though, please sit down. You’re going to drive Max to distraction at this rate.”

He sat on the sofa, turned towards her and waited until she had settled herself back in, her glass of water cradled in her hands. 

“When you say things like that, are you joking?” He was asking the question before he’d even really decided to speak.

“Not really. I did want you to sit down.” She drank, looking at him over the rim of her glass, and he found that he couldn’t tell if she was having him on.

“I mean, about the me reminding you of some stern head teacher. That sort of thing.”

“Oh. Well, yeah, of course. It’s a joke because you don’t literally remind me of any of my teachers. But on the other hand it’s not entirely a joke, because if you wanted to be all like that I’d go along with it, for fun.” Her fingertips were turning white, pressed against the glass, and he was happy to see her set it aside. She rested her elbow on the back of the sofa and leaned her head on her hand. “Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.” He found himself smiling, tried to keep it in check. There wasn’t reason enough to be hopeful, yet. “What do you know about BDSM?”

She adjusted herself on the sofa, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Academically, or personally?”

“Personally. Though later I guess I should hear about your academic pursuits.” 

She nodded, straightening out her legs, then curling up again. “The thing I want you to understand, is I don’t have a lot of experience for someone my age, in anything, but I’m by no means a prudish person.”

He leaned towards her, up on his knees for a moment before he sat down again, not wanting to overwhelm her.

“That question wasn’t meant to judge you. I don’t care if you’ve had a hundred partners, or two, or what you’ve done with them.”

“Then why not just start by telling me whatever it is that you need to tell me?” She had lifted her chin, not defiant, but confident, sure that she was right. And she was, Tom had to admit. He didn’t need to know, at least not from the off.

“It would make it easier for me compose what it is I want to tell you if I had a frame of reference, but you’re right, you don’t need to tell me.”

“Ok then.” She glanced down at where Max was standing next to the sofa, attentive but at ease. She glanced at Tom, and he patted the sofa between them. Max jumped up and settled in with his head resting on Shannon’s knee. She worked her fingers into his ruff as she took a deep breath. “Any of my high school boyfriends, I think we can dispense with them from this discussion.”

“Why is that?”

“Didn’t learn much about myself from them. They were fine young men, but,” she shrugged. “Nothing worth writing home about. Nothing that you’d want to know, in light of your question.”

“Fair enough.”

“In university I was single for over a year and then I pretty much dated David through the entire time, up to my first months in graduate school.” She reached up and rubbed under her collarbone with her fingertips before returning to Max. It looked absentminded, but Tom wondered if she was working out the pangs of remembering someone she’d been with for that long. “Typical university student, I thought we’d get married. In retrospect it’s a miracle that we didn’t and I sort of hate myself for sticking with him for that long. We got on, obviously, but he was dismissive in a way that my friends all hated but I couldn’t see at the time. He was studying architecture at Wentworth and I thought of the both of us as artists but he thought of himself as a, I don’t know, scientist and engineer and I was like his pet artist or something. Stupid.”

Tom ached for her, easing himself closer on the sofa so he could touch her upper arm. “You weren’t stupid. And this isn’t what I intended by that question, Shannon. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to have to tell me all this.”

“It’s fine. I’m glad you know.” She laid her hand over his and gave him a gentle squeeze before letting him go. “It’s not like I’m traumatized or anything. He was alright as a partner, but not right for me.”

“He doesn’t sound alright.”

“Well, I like to tell myself that he was, because otherwise I stuck with a man who wasn’t alright for almost five years.”

“That wasn’t on you.”

She shrugged. “Can we agree to move on from this?” When he nodded she continued. “To your point, we didn’t get up to anything that I’d think of as being kinky.” She played with a lock of hair next to her face, twirling it around her finger and letting it go. “I mean, I like being handled in a fairly intense way from time to time. You might have noticed.”

“I have.” He couldn’t quite keep a smile from quirking his lips.

“And you’re delighted by it.” She leaned back and straightened her leg, reaching out a foot to nudge him. “I know you are.”

“I am.”

“So, why don’t you just skip to the part where you tell me what you want to tell me?” She pressed her toes against the side of his thigh. Max stood up and huffed, perturbed that the humans were insisting on moving about, and jumped down, trotting over to his dog bed in the far corner of the room. 

“Because I’m interested, now. And you don’t seem distressed to tell me.”

“Well I’m about to tell you about Marc now. I might start sounding downright fond.”

“That doesn’t bother me. Besides, I know you like to hear about my past and you’ve never been jealous.”

“Yes and I know that makes me weird.”

“Nothing wrong with that. Go ahead and be weird, if that’s what you want to call it. I like hearing your stories as much as you like hearing mine.”

“Alright. So, I met Marc well after David and I had parted ways. And he was the opposite of David. He thought I was brilliant.” She ducked her head behind her hand. 

“Well, you are brilliant.” 

“Shush,” she said, though there was no heat in it. “Not my point. My point is that he met me through my work and he just gently pursued me, you might say. He treated me really kindly. And he was,” she waved her hand for a moment. “David and I had been together for nearly five years, and we weren’t actually all that well matched, in retrospect, and the sex had become, again, in retrospect, boring. Marc is quite a bit older than me, he was successful and confident and he treated me like it was his privilege to spend time with me and that made me feel bold. And he was good.” She blushed. “I don’t want to wax too poetic about him. He wasn’t right for me, in the end, but he was honest about it from the beginning, that I wasn’t ever going to be his partner, only his lover. Which makes it sound like he didn’t respect me but I don’t think that’s true.”

“It’s alright. I’ve heard you talk about him enough that I know what you mean.”

“Good. So the thing is, he made me better too.”

“Better at what?”

“Sex. If I ever ask for anything, explicitly, you have him to thank for that. I knew it was important of course but I’d never actually done it.”

“Well good.” Tom found himself wanting to meet this man, to see if he fit the image that Tom had built up in his own head. The fact that Shannon had turned Marc down the last time she’d been in Paris, even in light of her apparent good feeling for him, gave him a subtle sense of victory, which he tried to squash.

“As for the question at hand,” she paused. “The question of whether or not I have any personal experience with BDSM, I have to say not really.”

“I’m dying to know what not really means.”

She laughed, covering her mouth with her hand for a moment. “Yeah, that’s a pretty vague thing to say. Alright. I felt very comfortable with him, very quickly, and again, I know I’m lucky. He inspired confidence in me, and he could just as well have been a sociopath.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing for these things,” Tom said. “You felt comfortable with me pretty quickly. Maybe you’re just a good judge of character.”

“People who say that they are usually aren’t,” she said. When he merely tilted his head she continued. “David didn’t particularly like any direction from me in terms of sex. I think he tolerated it because some men’s magazine told him he should. He particularly didn’t care for me telling him he could be rougher with me. He said it scared him but I think now that he just didn’t like being told what to do. As for Marc, he was delighted.” She was clearly blushing, and kept looking away from Tom as she spoke, struggling to meet his eye. “Anything I asked for he would do, and then sometimes he’d offer me a bit more. It was like, I finally got exactly what I wanted. It was like Christmas.” She snickered. “A really dirty Christmas.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Tom said, unable to keep from smiling at her. “I hope I do the same for you.”

“You do, and better.” She inched closer to him on the sofa. “So, he suggested a few other things. I liked being held down so he suggested that maybe I’d like being tied to the headboard. I liked being surprised so he suggested that maybe I’d like being blindfolded. And I did.” She shrugged. “That’s pretty much it.”

“Pretty much?”

She smiled slowly, looking down at the sofa. “We never talked about it but we never actually fucked while I was tied up. He’d untie me before that, but when I was tied to the headboard he’d just use his hands.”

“He didn’t go down on you while you were tied up?” Tom asked.

She pressed her lips together, thinking. “No, I don’t think so. I never noticed.”

“Ok. Go on.” Tom thought that despite their lack of conversation on the matter, Marc had probably been aware of the fact that he needed to keep an eye on her while she was in that position. 

“So, for what it’s worth, if I was tied up and blindfolded, he would sometimes get me right to the very edge of coming and then back off, sometimes a few times in a row, and he’d just sit on the end of the bed teasing me.”

Tom closed his eyes on a slow blink, imagining her worked up like that. “Where were his hands when he was teasing you?”

“Let me think.” She closed her eyes, color still high in her cheeks. “On my ankles, or my calves, sometimes up on my thighs. I’d be cursing at him for not touching me and he’d tell me that he was.” 

Tom nodded, satisfied that Marc, whether he knew what he was doing or not, had at least kept her grounded while he was edging her. 

“And that’s it.” She sat up straighter, her feet on the cushion in front of her, body entirely turned towards him. “Now I gather you have something to tell me.”

“Just one more question first,” he said.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “For someone who didn’t start this conversation I’m being awfully patient.”

“You said you didn’t really have any experience with BDSM.”

“I don’t like to imagine that counts,” she said. “It was just something we did without really discussing it.”

“He asked if you wanted to try those things, though, right?” Tom found himself picking at the back of the sofa, nervous, and forced himself to stop.

“He asked about the blindfold and the being tied up, which yes, counts as bondage I suppose. He didn’t ask about the teasing but it felt all of a piece with everything else we were doing. It wasn’t like we sat down and agreed that he was going to dominate me, I didn’t agree to submit to him. It was just something we were doing for fun.” She leaned over and took her glass off the coffee table, taking a long drink.

“And that’s what makes the difference, for you, the agreement?”

“Yes, based on some of my more _academic_ pursuits.” She finished her water and set the cup aside. “Otherwise it’s just playing.”

“Nothing wrong with that.” He finished his own water, stood up and collected her cup and took them to the kitchen.

“I agree. Now, I think this is just about enough of me being patient with you. You had something you wanted to tell me.” She looked at him over the back of the sofa as he walked back to the living room. “Out with it.”

“I have, for as long as I can remember, had a preference for being the dominant partner in a sexual relationship.”

She nodded, looking serious. “Does that mean that every encounter we’ve had has been unsatisfactory?”

“No, not at all.” He had counted on her questioning if their relationship so far had been adequate but he hadn’t anticipated her being so cool and calm, questioning him right out of the gate. She had unclasped her hands, lying one arm over the back of the sofa, the other hand resting on a knee, opening her shoulders up to him. He wondered if she had done it on purpose, making herself look bigger and putting on the trappings of being at ease when before she’d closed herself off with her arms and legs pulled tightly inward. She was employing a strategy, consciously or unconsciously, and either way he found himself intrigued even as he needed to focus on the conversation at hand.

“I have a preference,” he said. “I don’t need for it to be a part of every encounter.”

“Your preference,” she said, trying the word out, “is it only in regards to sexual encounters, or does it apply to other aspects of your relationship as well?”

“I only want to dominate my partner in the setting of a sexual encounter.” He paused. “That doesn’t mean that I might not angle to get my own way outside of that, but that’s only human.”

“Your preferences for music in the car come to mind,” she said. “I wouldn’t consent to you being dominant in that arena.”

He couldn’t stop from smiling at her, the feeling of hope that had been so dormant surging forward again. “But in other areas?”

“Not so fast.” She leaned over and rubbed her forehead for a moment. “So, you don’t need this to be present in every sexual encounter.”

“No, I don’t.”

“How do you decide?”

“It depends on what we both want, how much time we have, like any other variable.” He rubbed his thumb down the side of his mouth and chin, worrying at the beard there. The fact that there was more to it than that didn’t seem to be something he could get into at the moment, and even though she’d figure it out later, hopefully she wouldn’t feel like he’d left anything out. 

“So if you came to me and said Shannon, I’d like to dominate you, and I said no, I wasn’t in the mood for that, you’d say...?”

“I’d say that’s fine. Of course.” 

“What about Rachael?” Only a quick blink betrayed the fact that it had taken some effort for her to ask.

“What about her?” Tom asked, thrown by the sudden change in direction of the conversation.

“Did Rachael allow you to dominate her?” Shannon shifted, but didn’t cover herself.

“She didn’t,” Tom said, trying to feel his way towards what she was really asking. “That isn’t why we broke up though.”

“Did it have anything to do with it, do you think?” The lock of hair she’d been playing with earlier had come free from behind her ear and she pushed it back.

“Only in that we weren’t compatible in a number of areas, from the beginning. I wouldn’t have ended a relationship over this.” He paused. “I’m not giving you an ultimatum.”

“Well good. Because if you were, I doubt I’d be here long enough to hear the end of it.”

He couldn’t help but move a bit closer to her, wanting to draw her in, but she stayed put and he wound up settling back into his little corner of the sofa. “Yeah, I don’t do too well with those either.” 

“So, let’s say that I say yes, that I’ll allow you to dominate me. What does that entail?”

He hadn’t expected such a direct question so soon, and took his time trying to find the thread of the conversation he wanted to follow.

“Well for one thing, I wouldn’t want you to allow me to dominate you, exactly. What I would want is for you to submit to me.” He hadn’t intended to bring in the idea of what he wanted to the conversation, had intended for it to remain vague, but the way she was framing the questions had forced his hand.

“That sounds like semantics to me.”

“It’s not.” He tried to gather his thoughts.

“A convincing rebuttal,” she said, smirking at him.

“My point is, you can agree to do everything that another person asks of you without submitting.”

“That sounds like the very definition of submitting, to me,” she said.

“I’d say there’s a difference between submitting and acquiescing. You can go through the motions of satisfying someone’s every request or demand without really feeling it.”

“So, describe to me how you’d want me to feel it.” She rolled her shoulders back, and he could see it, then, the strain of keeping herself from closing in. 

“What was it like, being tied to that headboard?” he asked. He could imagine it, for a moment. From what she’d said about Marc he would have bet anything that it was nothing but black silk all the way for that guy. 

“It was fun, or else I wouldn’t have done it,” she said, her voice even.

“Fun how, though? I only ask because I think it’s relevant.”

She sighed, adjusting herself so her legs were bent, knees pointing out towards the edge of the sofa, but otherwise kept her posture open. “Let’s see. I liked the attention.” She raised an eyebrow at him, clearly daring him to make fun of her. “I liked... not having to think of my next move. There was no next move. I liked letting him call the shots for a little while.” She smiled, clearly remembering. “Does that answer your question?”

“Yes. Would you like to do that again?”

“Yes, but that’s not all you wanted. There’s this question of _submission_.” She did her best to make her voice deep, imitating him. 

“It’s a matter of intent. Not just that you’re agreeing to let me do what I like, more like you’re giving that over to me from the start.”

She leaned her head on her hand, looking a bit more relaxed than she had done. “You make it sound like meditating.”

“I’ve heard that it can be.”

“You’ve heard?” She straightened her legs out, rearranging herself, but moving no nearer. 

“I’ve never been able to quite do it, myself.”

“What makes you think that I can?”

He thought of her baring the nape of her neck to him the first night they’d met, the way she threw her hands over her head in bed and asked him to hold her down, the relief on her face when she had him to strain against. “I just have a feeling. That, and you already know that you’ve enjoyed bondage in the past.”

She waved her hand, dismissive. “Nothing impressive.”

“But it wasn’t nothing. You tried it.”

She shifted again, getting her knees under herself, kneeling back on her heels. “It’s not just that, though, is it?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, having lost the thread.

“That’s not all you want, or you wouldn’t have been so nervous about this conversation.” She knelt up and for a moment he thought she was just stretching her legs, but she shifted towards him, walking on her knees, her hand trailing along the back of the sofa. When she was in front of him, her knees nearly touching his leg, she reached out and touched the side of his face instead. “Do you want to hurt me, Tom?”

He opened his mouth, feeling her fingers firm against his jaw. He wanted to tell her that it was more complicated than that, wanted to tell her the various nuances and variations of how he might incorporate pain or discomfort into dominating her, but she had asked a simple question, and with her fingers pressing on his jaw it seemed that she wanted to leave him room only to offer a simple answer. As he took a breath, he reflected that apparently he had a type, in that she appeared to be a strong-willed switch. 

“Yes.”

She smiled, slow but broad, her fingers tightening on his jaw for a moment before she let go. 

“I suppose you’re going to tell me that there’s more to it than that,” she said.

“There is, much more.” He felt dizzy with the proximity of her, with the way she’d gone from timidly giving up answers to demanding them. 

“Well, how badly do you want to hurt me?” She was still much taller than him, on the sofa, and he had to look up at her face.

“How badly do I _want_ to hurt you, or how badly do I want to _hurt_ you,” he asked, not sure he had the question right.

“Both.”

“I don’t ever want to harm you. I don’t ever want to scare you beyond what might be exciting or fun for you at the time or at least immediately afterwards. As for how badly I want to do those things, quite badly.”

He was surprised when she swung her legs over his, sitting on his thighs and looping her arms around his neck.

“And if I said that I was willing to try _submitting_ to you, but I want you to leave aside the hurting me, for the moment?”

“That’s fine.”

She had a firm grip on him, her knees against the outside of his thighs as she leaned forward to kiss him. She rested her hands on his shoulders as she deepened their kiss, sliding one hand back to cup his head. He held on to her hips, moving down to squeeze her arse just once before she pulled away. 

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her _I love you,_ but he held off, not wanting the entire conversation they’d had so far to hold in it the flavor of a condition, even after the fact. 

“When do you want to try these things?” she asked.

“Any time.” He reached back for her arse, kneading his fingers firmly against the denim. 

“Hmm.” She pressed back into his hands. “Can’t deny I’m intrigued but I’m not in the mood to try something new right now.”

“I think just talking about it is enough for now,” he said.

“Agreed.” She leaned to the side and slid off his lap, landing on the sofa with her legs over his lap. “Where did you pick it up?”

“London.” He braced himself as she nudged him with her foot, laughing as he adjusted himself on the sofa. “You want to know how I got into BDSM in general?”

“Yeah. I mean, I could be making assumptions but I’m guessing that you didn’t come to it by way of Alta Vista.”

“Might have done. Some people do. What about you and your academic pursuits?”

“I was young and horny at the dawn of the internet era, it would have been weird if I didn’t stumble onto a few things,” she said. “So, is that how it was for you as well?”

“Not really.” He rubbed his hand over his mouth, wondering why he hadn’t thought of the possibility of her asking such a question. “I can tell you about it, but I need to ask you to trust me, because I know some of this is going to sound odd.”

“Odd like, odder than the way your life currently is?” She curled her legs up and leaned her head on her hand, elbow on the back of the couch.

“I’d say yes. The thing is, I want you to know that I’m still friends with both of these men.”

“That’s a good sign then. I like to think I’ve always got an open mind but I’ll make a concerted effort in this case.” She was curled up tight and he wished he could pull her close to him, but if she needed a little bit of space to hear him out he wasn’t going to press on that.

“And it goes without saying, I know, but because this isn’t only my story,” he trailed off.

“I want to hear it for myself. I’m not going to share this with anyone, including Edward, if you were wondering.”

“I’d only wonder because you two are so close. So thank you. It’s always easier to just talk without feeling like I have to cover up their identities somehow.” He stretched his back, his arms over his head for a moment, eyes closed as he gathered his thoughts. “So, alright. I was seventeen when I met these two guys, brothers, Ian and Greg. My dad actually introduced me to them, because he could see that they were basically the sort of man I was trying to pretend to be, and he thought that maybe if I was around the real deal I wouldn’t be so taken with the seamier side of things. Which, as you know, didn’t entirely work out, but who knows what would have happened if I hadn’t had them in my life.” As he spoke he searched Shannon’s face for any sign of discomfort, but her features remained placid. 

“I’ll admit, that’s a lot to take in for starters. If they were friends with your dad at first, how old were they? Was it not a bit odd for them to befriend a seventeen year old?”

“I was leaving school then, heading to RADA the following year and I thought of myself as an adult and I was trying to, you know, force myself into a lot of adult spaces that weren’t really meant for me. So I think my dad figured, as far as I was concerned I was already in their age group. Greg was mid twenties, Ian was a little older. I hit it off with Greg from the start, and he and Ian were together a lot so we naturally became friends as well.”

“And when did you become _involved_ with them?”

“Greg and I saw each other nearly every day and he could see what was going on with me clearer than anyone else ever had. I felt like I was burning up, all the time, driven by this kind of crazy motor, like I was sparking all over the place but couldn’t really move in a straight line. I was already into drugs by the time I met Greg, and they helped, to a certain extent. I don’t want to make the time I spent on drugs sound romantic or like it was a good thing but a good high would smooth out that frayed energy and I’d get back into my head, think clearly, or I’d think I was thinking clearly. It was relief, and it felt good, for a while, until it wore off and then I’d feel worse than before. It’s not worth it but the pleasure and relief it gives you is real, in the moment.” He fought the urge to hide behind his hand after he’d said all that, laying bare that era of his life all over again, deeper this time than on their first long conversation in the cafe. 

“The relief would have to be real, otherwise no one would do it,” she said. 

“Right,” he said, aware that he was beginning to talk faster and faster but unable to slow himself down. “So I’d left school and I was working but I wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow, obviously. I met these two young men, just a bit older than me, and they were basically both everything I wanted to be but I felt like I was too much of a hopeless fuck up to ever get to where they were. But they didn’t let me get away with thinking like that, or at least, with talking like that, and they must have seen something in me that I didn’t see in myself, because they really took me in, as a friend.”

“Pretty canny of your dad to introduce you,” she said. It might have been his imagination but he thought she might be speaking more slowly than usual, maybe trying to slow him down. 

“If you could have met all of us back then you’d have thought it was a no brainer. Greg and I were pretty similar, in that we both had a surplus of energy and didn’t always immediately think to channel it in the right direction, though he was about a thousand times more likely than me to actually do so, and that is not an exaggeration. We realized pretty quickly that we found each other attractive and as we weren’t really fit company for anyone else it seemed pretty natural for us,” he paused, rubbing his thumb over his lips as he thought. “I was going to say, to fall into bed together, but really it was more like we just collided from time to time.”

“Sounds a bit chaotic.”

“It was.”

Shannon straightened her legs out, glancing at him before laying them over his thighs. He nodded and she scooted closer, still leaning against the back of the sofa. 

“Was Greg using drugs as well?”

“No. That wasn’t his thing.” He rubbed his hands up and down her shins, letting his hands rest on her ankles.

“I know this part of your life is over and done with, and you’re still friends with them, but I’m sure you can see how this might all look concerning to someone like me.” She reached for the throw that was just behind her on the sofa, pulling it over her shoulders.

“Someone like you?”

“Someone who hasn’t ever done drugs. You were seventeen and using drugs. Greg was in his twenties, and not. It sounds like you were in a vulnerable position.” 

“I was. It would have been much worse if not for Greg. He kept me occupied and out of a lot of trouble.”

“How was he keeping you occupied, exactly?” Shannon cleared her throat. “Maybe I don’t mean exactly, to be honest.”

“We were working out, running, weights, whatever my current job or most likely next job required. Whatever he thought would make me burn off the most energy. Sometimes I’d go over to his if I was high because I knew he wouldn’t harass me about it. If I was having a hard time coming down or if I was making some kind of attempt to be clean I’d go over to his too, because I knew he’d just make space for me. He and his brother both worried about me but they knew getting all mother hen about it wasn’t going to help.”

Shannon rested the side of her head in her hand. “Did you two have sex while you were high?”

Tom looked at her carefully, trying to decide what it was that gave away that her calm demeanor was a front. He found it in the set of her shoulders, her right higher than the left as she tensed even while trying to appear calm.

“I’d say no but I think it’s more fair to say that we never had sex while he knew I was high,” Tom said.

Shannon sat up straight, stretching her neck from side to side. “I have to remember that you said you’re still friends with both of them. It doesn’t seem to me that you’d remain friends with someone who had hurt you, even if you didn’t realize it until later.”

“You’re right. This particular fling only lasted a few months, and then he was off to Kosovo.”

“Was he a soldier?”

“No, a photographer.” He waited while she nodded slowly, gathering the throw around her shoulders again. “Before he left he asked Ian to look after me.” He noticed the subtle gather between her eyebrows, not quite an incredulous look, but approaching one. “I do mean, really, just look after me. I kept sort of inching closer and closer to getting sober but I hadn’t quite done it and every time I backslid Greg was all worried that it was going to be an actual crisis.”

“Yeah, come to that, if your dad is the one who had introduced all of you, and Greg was so worried, why didn’t he go back to your dad like, hey, did you know your kid is in some deep shit?”

Tom had to stifle his smile at hearing her American tinged speech; as endearing as he found it he doubted she’d appreciate that right now. “They were in their twenties and they saw me as a peer, not a kid, and besides, you don’t grass on your friends. It wasn’t smart but it’s how they thought about it, back then. And my dad didn’t have a grasp on how serious my drug problem was either. My mother did but there’s no way they would have gone to her, and as long as I was hanging around Greg I was mostly either working or in his company so they didn’t actually see me high or messed up as much as they had. They were happy or at least happier about the way things were.”

“Alright. I can see that. So, what did you and Ian get up to?”

“Fighting, mostly. At least at first.”

“Like, actual fighting? Just brawling around with this guy?” She took the throw off her shoulders and threw it over the back of the sofa, leaning back as she took her legs off of him and curled up into the corner of the sofa. 

“Ian was all into meditation and centering, all this Eastern shit that I did not dig at all. I think he might have entertained the idea that he was going to get me clean with that and whenever I thought he was getting a bit holier than thou it usually came to blows.” 

“How did that work out for you? Were you at least evenly matched?”

“He almost always bested me, but not before I got in a few good blows. That’s the thing about fighting with a junkie, they’ll fight without any regard for their own self preservation, but they’re also not all that coordinated most of the time.”

Shannon turned her head, he was sure to hide a smile at his description. 

“It’s alright, it was fucking pathetic. I was so jealous of him, how in control he was. He said he could teach me, but it turned out that we were more alike than he thought. He thought he could teach me control by dominating me, but I’m not wired like that, and neither is he. He had a hard limit about me dominating anyone else unless I was entirely clean, and not just for a day or two at a time, but for good.”

Shannon leaned forward. “Is that why you went to rehab?”

“No, I went to rehab because I woke up one day in a place I didn’t know, surrounded by people who didn’t have my best interests in mind to say the least, and I was afraid I was actually going to die. I didn’t even tell Ian I was going, I just signed myself in and my parents told him when he came looking for me. Pissed off quite a few people disappearing that way but I eventually rejoined the world and when I did we picked up where we’d left off.” Tom shifted himself so he was tucked into the corner of the sofa, facing Shannon. 

“So did you have a sexual relationship with Ian too? Was Greg still in Kosovo then?” She was twirling a lock of hair that had escaped from her ponytail, and he guessed that she probably didn’t even know she was doing it.

“We never had a sexual relationship, Ian and I. The dominance and submission stuff didn’t involve sex. Greg was still in Kosovo then but he knew I’d been to rehab. Didn’t really know about the other stuff though.”

“I guess it’s a lot to put in an email.” 

“To say the least. After Ian saw that I was really truly clean he held up his promise to teach me, and I was good at it. It felt good to be in control of myself, to be outside my own life for as long as I was at their mercy, and it felt good to be giving that to them, too.”

Shannon was still but there seemed to be a gathering tension around her eyes as she took that in. “You were the one dominating them, why were you at their mercy?” she asked.

“They could shut it down with just a word, or less than a word. If Ian or I had seen that things weren’t going well for them, the whole exercise would have stopped. I had to be in control of myself, and them, but the entire scene was only going to continue under their say so. It’s a balancing act, and it feels good to do it well.”

Shannon nodded. “This person you’re talking about, it wasn’t Ian.”

“He doesn’t submit, and he couldn’t have kept an eye on me anyway if he’d been trying. It was a trusted friend of his. We haven’t kept in touch, if you’re wondering.”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t.” She stood up and for a moment he was afraid that he’d upset her, but she only went to the kitchen sink to refill her water glass. “You must be parched,” she said as she came back with a glass for him.

“A bit, yeah.” He turned himself to sit normally, then drank half the glass in one go. He set it on the floor as she settled back onto the sofa, her legs hooked over his again.

“You make domination sound really appealing. I’m almost sorry I won’t get to try it.” 

“Why not?”

Her smile faltered as she answered him. “You just said you don’t submit, to anyone.”

“You’re not beholden to only be with me. If the time comes that you want to try it out, I’d help you.” 

She laughed suddenly, a soft surprised sound. “Thanks. I forget about that sometimes.” She reached back and undid her ponytail, shaking her hair out and pulling it back again, more loosely this time. “So, Greg and Ian, where are they now, in terms of your life I mean?”

Tom looked at his watch then back at her. “You can ask them yourself, they should be coming over any moment now.” He kept a straight face while she froze, then stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “I’m kidding, of course.”

She knelt up and advanced across the sofa at him. “You muppet, you had me there for a moment,” she said as she grasped his shoulders, pushing on him.

He swung his legs up onto the sofa, letting her push him back as he guided her to lie down with him. “I wouldn’t spring new people on you like that,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her. She had settled with her head on his chest, turned so she was facing out into the room. 

“See to it that you don’t,” she said, her back rising and falling as she sighed. 

“Really though, they’re both still good friends. I see Greg more than Ian, but that’s just down to everyone being busy and Ian has a young family to boot.” He rubbed her back slowly, feeling her shoulders gradually lower as her head laid more heavily against him. “Greg and I went back to just being good mates once he got back from Kosovo.”

“How did you know I was wondering?”

“Because I would wonder.” He worked his thumbs into the muscles around her shoulder blades, digging deeper as she groaned. “This was a lot to get into all at once, wasn’t it?”

“A bit, yeah, but I’m ok.” She inched herself higher against him, giving him leverage to reach further down on her back. “You have to admit it’s a bit of a strange story though. You’re seventeen, you strike up a friendship with two older men, you fuck one of them and then when that one goes off to a war zone he tells his brother to look after you, which his brother takes to mean, teach this kid about BDSM, and all while you’re not exactly always in your right mind. I know you got clean in the middle of it all, but you were still vulnerable and I don’t like thinking about how things could have gone differently or about you being in peril in general, because I love you.” 

He felt her breath catch and he waited a moment before shifting his hands to her hips, gently urging her to move up against him. She planted her hands on the sofa and carefully moved herself forward so they were face to face. 

“I love you too.” He put his hand between her shoulders, rubbing her back as she eased herself down, turning so she was tucked between his side and the back of the sofa. He shifted so they had room to look at each other. “That’s not going to change based on how much you like or don’t like my kinks, by the way.” 

“Thanks,” she said. “This isn’t some phase though. This is really important to you.”

He shifted, tangling their legs together. “True, but this isn’t all or nothing. You can try it out as slowly as you like, or as quick as you like, come to that, or take a break or stop altogether.”

She sighed, a deep slow breath that he knew would be followed by some silence on her part. 

“Because Ben likes it?” Her voice was unusually soft, so unlike her to be timid. 

“Ben does like it,” Tom said, feeling the frisson of fear that he always did when revealing information about Ben that on the one hand wasn’t his to tell and on the other hand was no more than the honesty Shannon deserved as his partner. “But that’s not why it’s ok. This isn’t the sort of thing I would bargain about.”

“Ok. I get it.” She settler her head on his chest again. “Thank you. And by the way, when you tell me things about Ben, they’re safe.” 

“I know.” He kept rubbing her back and side as she rested more of her weight on him, and soon he was nearly sure that she was asleep. “Hey.”

She slowly lifted her head. “Mmm?”

“Are you going to sleep for real, or should I wake you up?”

She blinked, considering it. “What time is it?”

“I’m not sure but I’m guessing it’s not quite eight.”

She pushed herself up and moved back, sitting on the sofa as he turned and let his feet touch the floor. 

“Have you eaten?” she asked.

“No, but there’s some stuff I can heat up. You?”

She nodded. “I didn’t expect you home so soon or I would have waited.” 

He stood up, offering her his hand. “Come out to the kitchen and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“Alright.” 

She perked up a little as they walked over to the kitchen, then sat at the table, her arms folded on the table top as she watched him fill the kettle.

“Something herbal please,” she said.

“Of course.” He glanced at her over his shoulder as he clicked the kettle into its base. She looked content, and he felt the usual pull towards her that he always did when doing something for her, the desire to do more mixed with gratitude that she was letting him take care of her, even in a small way. As he reached over her shoulder to set her tea down she tilted her head back, letting herself bump into his hip. He rested his hand on her forehead for a moment, then leaned over to kiss her, but not before marking the way her lips quirked into a small smile as he held her there. He wrapped an arm around her, cupping her cheek with his free hand and held her steady as the kiss deepened. She kept her head tilted back as he stood up, and he let his fingers brush against the long line of her throat as he stepped away.


End file.
